"As Anthony Anscombe surveys Winchford Priory, his beautiful Elizabethan house in Oxfordshire, he has the distinct feeling that he's under siege as, lurking in the village, are more than one or two reminders of a complicated past. His first wife was the hauntingly beautiful girl he married on an impulse. Amanda was never going to be a suitable wife for a country squire, so why does she cast such a long shadow in Anthony's life? Dependable, sturdy Sandra had plans to turn the Priory into a proper family home - until that summer when it all went horribly wrong. And then there's Dita, smart, tough, rapaciously social and high-maintenance, particularly when it comes to the previous Mrs Anscombes and their children..."